


and then i will kneel down

by prettydizzeed



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Author is trans, Church Sex, Churches & Cathedrals, Explicit Consent, Fleabag AU, M/M, Oral Sex, Priest Kink, Trans Aziraphale (Good Omens), Trans Crowley (Good Omens), Trans Male Character, soft heresy and tender sacrilege, t4t, this fic is officially sponsored by Moment's Silence (Common Tongue) by Hozier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-20 12:16:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19992058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettydizzeed/pseuds/prettydizzeed
Summary: “You don’t like answering questions, do you?” Aziraphale sounds a bit sad about it. “Okay.”He steps over to the table and picks up his tumbler. “Come with me. I know what to do with you.”And, well. Curiosity has always been Crowley’s hamartia, hasn’t it?He follows Aziraphale into the sanctuary, all the way down the aisle, and stops. Aziraphale points at each side of the confessional.“You go in there, I go in there.”





	and then i will kneel down

**Author's Note:**

> title is from "Gay Messiah" by Rufus Wainwright because i have a brand to maintain
> 
> about 80% of the dialogue from this fic is directly lifted from Fleabag s2 ep4
> 
> tw for a brief mention of suicide ideation in the context of the holy water plotline from the show. also, in this fic Aziraphale and Crowley are both trans, and the word "clit" is used for both of their bodies, so be aware of that if it's something that makes you dysphoric.

Crowley’s walking home from an assignment he doesn’t particularly want to think about when a minivan swerves halfway onto the sidewalk. He jumps backwards out of the way and just about flattens their tires with a snap of his fingers, but changes his mind at the last second and miracles the driver enough energy to stay awake the rest of their trip home. He’s worn down enough that he doesn’t think he’ll notice the extra fatigue, at this point.

Then he looks up, and he suddenly feels a lot more alert.

The building, constructed so close to the road that it’s practically within arm’s reach of his position just off the edge of the sidewalk, bears a cross at the top of its small steeple. He glances at the side walls—yep, stained glass. There’s a sign by the road a bit further down with a Bible pun spelled out in interchangeable black letters. All signs point to him standing on church property, except one: he’s still standing. His nose isn’t bleeding; he doesn’t feel like he’s been walking barefoot on asphalt in August; his ears aren’t even ringing all that much.

He does the only reasonable thing to do in such circumstances: he goes into the church. 

Even inside, he remains strangely fine; there’s an underlying static that’s to be expected from being around this many crosses and hymnals, but the ground itself isn’t actively attempting to evict him. It’s bizarre, and a bit terrifying—he shuts down the thought that maybe somehow he’s no longer demonic enough to be damaged by all this sanctity and doesn’t stop to sort out whether that’s bile in his throat or some pitiful hope. 

Instead, he sits down. Looks at the windows, the organ. Presses his palms into the back of the pew in front of him and watches them remain unscathed. He’s considering kneeling, just for the fuck of it, just because it’s been thousands of years of never having the option; the moment feels charged, weighty, and then—

YOU WERE ROMEO I WAS THE SCARLET LETTER AND MY DADDY SAID STAY AWAY FROM JULIET—

Crowley looks up with a start. There’s a light on in the sacristy.

BUT YOU WERE EVERYTHING TO ME I WAS BEGGING YOU PLEASE DON’T GO—

He’s fairly sure he knows how this is going to go. He gets up anyway.

AND I SAID ROMEO TAKE ME SOMEWHERE WE CAN BE ALONE—

The door is ajar.

I’LL BE WAITING ALL THAT’S LEFT TO DO IS—

Aziraphale is in front of a wooden wardrobe, jumping to reach the top shelf. Crowley turns the CD player off. 

Aziraphale turns sharply at the sudden lack of sound and stumbles. “Oh, fuck!” he exclaims, practically yelling, “Fuck! Jesus!”

Aziraphale’s clerical collar is off, the top button of his cassock undone. Seeing the hollow of his throat makes Crowley feel like he needs to go lie down, both from the startling intimacy of the soft skin itself and from the burning memory of Aziraphale buttoned up and holy.

He’s still holy, of course, just also a bit… debauched. The juxtaposition is almost painfully hot.

This is already going nothing like Crowley expected. He tries to choose a response least likely to prompt Aziraphale to swear again; he’s not sure if he could take it. “Why are you here? It’s 9:45.”

“Oh, my God,” Aziraphale says, and Crowley resolutely does not think of a single Commandment, “I thought you were just in my head then—I mean you were, you were in my head then. But now you’re there.”

Aziraphale is drunk.

Crowley laughs awkwardly, refusing to dwell on Aziraphale’s admission that he’d been thinking of him. “Are you okay, angel?”

“Oh, fuck you, calling me angel like it doesn’t turn you on just to say it,” Aziraphale responds without a pause, smiling bitterly at him.

Okay, yeah, Aziraphale is _drunk._ It’s been an unspoken rule for who knows how many centuries that they don’t speak about it—this—them—and Crowley feels himself sway a bit, affected. Unfair that it should be a turn on to hear Aziraphale expose him for being turned on. Unfair that he should shine angelic light all over the endearment and thereby doom it to feel dark and dirty any time Crowley dares to use it after now, if it’ll even risk emerging from his throat again. Unfair that Aziraphale’s hands are on his hips, almost haughty, and that he smirks, and it’s still bitter.

It feels right now like Aziraphale has said enough for both of them, which is why Crowley doesn’t reply, just tilts his head, lifts his jaw up. It’s not a no. It might be a challenge, if he weren’t so petrified.

Aziraphale sighs. He’s restless, moreso than his usual fussiness; his hands sweep in larger gestures as he talks, and he keeps idly shifting his weight. “Do you want a drink?” 

Crowley swallows. “Okay.”

“Don’t move,” Aziraphale says, as if Crowley hasn’t been frozen in place since the second Aziraphale turned around. It’s an interesting role reversal, to be honest, but he doesn’t much want to analyze its implications.

“Are you a nostalgic person?” Aziraphale asks as he sets out two whiskey tumblers. Crowley was expecting wine, so far as he had any expectations, which he’s beginning to think he should stop doing. 

Crowley smiles tightly. “Yeah.” 

It feels like the kind of thing Aziraphale should know, after all the hours they’ve spent reminiscing in one restaurant or another, delaying the inevitable years apart. Aziraphale continues speaking. “Do you like Winnie the Pooh?”

Crowley is surprised Aziraphale is familiar with it, to be honest. He’s never seemed to pay much attention to pop culture, and especially not anything geared towards children. Still, even as it unknowingly calls him out on his own hypocrisy about how well they should know each other, the question makes Crowley relax a bit. He smiles, loose and genuine for the first time in longer than he’s willing to think about. “Yeah.”

“I fucking love Winnie the Pooh,” Aziraphale says, and it’s surprising not just because of the continued swearing—is this just what he’s like when he’s drunk now? Is something wrong? Is his congregation largely composed of sailors and disillusioned teenagers?—or the statement itself, but also, and most intensely, because of the truth of it, even in its mundanity. Crowley can’t remember the last time Aziraphale told him something new about himself, something raw and personal like this. Something soft and open and not couched neatly within the rules of heaven and hell. It reminds him of the first time Aziraphale told him he liked sushi.

It’s been a while since he’s watched Aziraphale eat.

The shocking intimacy of the previous moment is immediately one-upped: “I can’t read a Winnie the Pooh quote without crying,” Aziraphale continues, shaking his head. “Fuck. Piglet.”

“Piglet,” Crowley agrees, hand to his chest.

“Why are you here?” Aziraphale asks suddenly. “Sorry, but why—why are you—were you looking for me?”

Was he?

It’s been—well, Crowley knows to the half-hour how long it’s been since they last saw each other, but he’s not going to acknowledge that, not even in his own mind. And he knew, of course he knew, even though they haven’t spoken recently enough for Aziraphale to have told him, that Aziraphale has been assigned to this church for a while. But it’s not like—well. That’s not why he’s here. 

He shrugs, tries to look believably casual. “About got run over on the sidewalk out there,” he says, tilting his head in the direction of the front of the church, “and then, ah. Got a bit caught up in wondering how come the consecrated ground was so painless on this and only this church site.” Because he knows it’s a fluke, he does. He just isn’t sure about the specifics.

“Yes, well,” Aziraphale says, and coughs. “So many priests nowadays don’t know Latin like they used to, not having grown up with it. Rather easy to mess up a syllable or two.” He traces some invisible pattern on the table, not looking at Crowley. “And it’s not like holy water affects them the way it does you and me; humans can hardly tell it apart from plain tap water.”

Crowley takes a moment to reel from this confession, adjust to the weight of it, while Aziraphale jumps for the top shelf of the wardrobe again. “God help me,” Aziraphale mutters, and the whiskey bottle falls towards his hands. “Whoa,” he says, steadying instead of surprised, and catches it. “Thank you.”

Crowley doesn’t even have enough unoccupied space in his mind to be uncomfortable about that. He keeps thinking of Aziraphale, decades back at the very least, walking these grounds and lying to his congregation the way he’d lied to God Herself in Eden, reckless with the wild hope that one day Crowley would—

Aziraphale passes him the drink. “Here’s to peace,” he says, looking directly at him, and he sounds so tired.

Crowley holds his tumbler out, but Aziraphale doesn’t tap it yet. “And those who get in the way of it,” he finishes, and smiles. Something about it is resigned.

Their cups clink together. Crowley takes a sip. Aziraphale drains his.

They stare at each other a moment.

“Look at this,” Aziraphale says, taking a hanger off the rack of robes and stoles at the side of the room and hooking it onto the edge of the wardrobe door. The robe and stole are both deep purple with gold accents and complex, striking embroidery. 

“Look at it,” Aziraphale repeats, smiling at it softly, fond and aching with some regret Crowley can’t place. “That’s the first one I ever got. Went all the way to Rome for that.” Back to Rome, he should probably say, but his wistfulness highlights his familiarity with the area. Crowley could taste oysters on his tongue, he’s sure, if he concentrated. “I knew I wanted a bold, you know, this color, but proper plum. You can only get proper plum in Italy.”

It’s a far cry from Aziraphale’s typical style of creams and tans and the occasional light blue or green, but the explanation helps Crowley reconcile the garments with his concept of Aziraphale; he’s always been one to seek out the highest quality form of everything he wants.

Always save one exception, it could be argued, both from a place of self-deprecation and because Aziraphale does not seek him out. Aziraphale grows roots, and Crowley moves his plants with him to every successive apartment, and every so often, there’s an excuse to stumble into one another. Chains, or spies, or a church that doesn’t hurt to enter.

Aziraphale runs his hand along the stole. His manicured nails and the gold threads both glint in the light. 

“Sometimes I worry I’m only in it for the outfits,” he says, and Crowley should be wondering how that’s even possible—what does that mean, that he’d Fall if it weren’t for proper plum liturgical vestments?—or simultaneously relishing in and panicking about the openness of such a statement, but Aziraphale is just looking at him, silent and just this side of daring, a shadow of a smirk along his mouth, giving Crowley plenty of time to picture him in such a robe.

So he does.

“So beautiful, isn’t it?” Aziraphale asks, and Crowley knows he wants an answer, can tell from the tone of his voice that he’s only asking it to give Crowley an excuse to say it, but instead of replying he just lets his eyes flick down across Aziraphale’s body and back up.

Aziraphale steps forward, mirroring the gaze. “I mean, your stuff is lovely, too,” and he sounds drunk, but he also sounds like he means it, which is unbearable.

“Hm,” Crowley says, which is a lot more coherent of a sound than he was expecting.

“What were you thinking about?” Aziraphale asks abruptly. “In the sanctuary, before you came in here?” Crowley gives a self-conscious laugh but doesn’t reply. 

“You don’t like answering questions, do you?” Aziraphale sounds a bit sad about it. Crowley would point out that this isn’t new, he has quite an impressive track record of avoiding talking about himself, but he knows the question is rhetorical precisely because Aziraphale is well aware of that. Aziraphale tilts his head at him, considering. “Okay.” He steps over to the table and picks up his tumbler. “Come with me. I know what to do with you.”

And, well. Curiosity has always been Crowley’s hamartia, hasn’t it?

He follows Aziraphale into the sanctuary, all the way down the aisle, and stops. Aziraphale points at each side of the confessional.

“You go in there, I go in there.”

“And you make me tell you all my secrets so you can ultimately trap and control me?” Crowley asks, because he feels like he’s been making this too easy so far, like maybe Aziraphale has forgotten who he is, or is trying to pretend it away along the same lines as Crowley’s thoughts in the pew: look, he’s in a church, he can’t be evil and damned and the enemy, everything’s fine. 

“Yeah,” Aziraphale says, both bright and sarcastic. “No, you tell me what’s weighing on your heart, and I listen without judgement and in complete confidence.” 

_We could do that without hiding it behind some ritual,_ Crowley thinks. _This elaborate farce to make the both of us feel better, like we’re not actually defying all that much, like it’s not real._ But, to be honest, they probably couldn’t—when’s the last time he told Aziraphale what was weighing on his heart? 1862? And even then, what interaction of theirs hasn’t been painstakingly constructed in an attempt to either escape the notice of or pacify an omniscient audience?

“Sounds dodgy,” he says instead.

“I just listen,” Aziraphale assures him. “At the very least, it’ll shut me up for a minute.” 

“I’m not Catholic,” Crowley says, smirking a bit, because he figures Aziraphale will splutter at the understatement of it. Because it’s easier to get out than _I like listening to you._

“Tonight, that doesn’t matter,” Aziraphale says, and that’s bullshit, it always matters, the weight and shape of how much it matters has been suffocating the both of them for millennia. And yet. They’ve been pretending so many things they haven’t wanted to, all their time on earth, because walls and trees and ducks have ears, because Satan’s voice is on the radio, because Heaven and Hell might’ve already learned how to use a camera. Would it really be so bad to, for once, for one night, pretend something nice?

 _Demon_ , Crowley reminds himself, and yeah, well, it probably would kill him, come to think of it. Not in the irreversible and total destruction of body and consciousness that results from contact with holy water, but all the same, for Aziraphale to give him… not love, even, but attention, care, and to accept whatever undoubtedly vulnerable divulgence comes fleeing out of him in there, all the while ignoring the irrefutable fact of his Fall and what it made him—it would destroy him, in a way he doesn’t have any insurance against.

That doesn’t mean he’s not going to do this.

“Won’t I catch fire or something?” Crowley asks, to remind Aziraphale that what he is can’t be ignored tonight or any night, but also because he’s genuinely a bit concerned.

“No,” Aziraphale says, and it’s gentler than it has any right to be. “Go on,” and that, in contrast, is challenging, which is easier to bear. Aziraphale’s expression is downright cocky.

Crowley takes a large swallow of his drink. “Go on,” Aziraphale repeats.

“All right,” Crowley says, and that feels like a confession in and of itself.

He steps into the confessional and pulls the curtain closed behind him, hears Aziraphale shuffling on the other side of the grate. Crowley takes a deep breath.

“Okay,” Aziraphale says, and he sounds excited, which is a lot to process, “Now you say, ‘bless me, Father, for I have sinned—’”

“I’m not gonna say that.”

“What?” Aziraphale asks, then laughs and apparently decides that’s fair. “Very good. It’s been, uh, enter days, years, months since my last confession,” he continues.

“Mm-mm,” Crowley says, shaking his head. Aziraphale doesn’t even bother to pause.

“Then I say, ‘it’s okay,’ blah blah blah blah-blah-blah blahblahblahblah,” Aziraphale says quickly, giddy and impatient, “‘til you tell me what’s on your mind. Tell me your,” he says, and hisses on the s of the next word. Crowley might be offended, under different circumstances, but he’s more shocked that Aziraphale is confronting, acknowledging, the whole demon thing. And it is rather funny, isn’t it, the first tempter, the instigator of the Original Sin, sitting in a confessional. 

_How much time do you have?_ he thinks wildly, and then says at the same time as Aziraphale, “Sins.”

“Sins,” Aziraphale agrees. “If you want.”

Crowley laughs. “Why would I tell you my sins?”

“Because it will make you feel better,” Aziraphale says, and it’s just a bit of a whine. “And because,” he adds, and then continues in a charged whisper, “I want to know.”

 _Do you really?_ Crowley thinks through what is, to be honest, an intense wave of desire.

“Okay,” he says, and takes a sip. “I lied.”

“Okay,” Aziraphale says, nonplussed.

“To you.”

“About?” Aziraphale still doesn’t sound particularly surprised, or hurt, just curious. It’s a heady feeling, that lack of repulsion.

“About the holy water.” He pauses, eyes screwed shut, but Aziraphale doesn’t say anything, and he can’t read the mood of the silence. “Not even entirely intentionally, but—when I said insurance, I mean more as a, as a weapon. But you jumped immediately to suicide pill and I didn’t correct you because—oh, I don’t know. I guess I was hurt that you thought that of me.” He swallows. “Or, no, really—I guess I was embarrassed that you’d picked up on it.”

“Okay,” Aziraphale says, and Crowley really wishes he would say something else, but after a short pause, Aziraphale only adds, “Keep going.”

“Well,” Crowley says, “I’ve stolen things. I’ve done a lot of coveting—not of my neighbor’s cow, or anything like that, but of, you know. Their positions in life. Stability. Freedom.” He thinks about it for a second and continues. “There’s been much masturbation, a bit of violence, and of course the endless fucking blasphemy,” he ends brightly. Aziraphale laughs.

“And?” His voice is low.

“And…” Crowley winces.

“Go on,” Aziraphale prompts.

Crowley thinks of Aziraphale’s wing, Aziraphale putting his body between him and the rain. Of the Crusades. A hundred waiters, over the years, sobbing in the back room with a new roll of twenties in their pocket. The Spanish Inquisition. A small child in 1985 who’d looked up at Crowley, at the perfect angle to see his eyes beneath his sunglasses, and giggled. The Triangle Shirtwaist fire. “And… I… I can’t.”

“It’s okay. Go on,” Aziraphale says, softer and more serious.

Crowley sighs. “I’m frightened.”

“Of what?”

“Forgetting things.” A woman, sinking her teeth into an apple and sighing, satisfied. A woman, shrieking for all the soldiers to hear, broken at the sight of her son’s tortured body. 

“People. Forgetting people.” He takes another sip of his whiskey. “And I’m ashamed of not knowing what I…” Stand for? He knows that; he’s got the eyes and the scales and the endless fucking mounds of paperwork to prove it. What he’s responsible for, out of all of it? What he would do if he had the choice? Those are harder to answer, even harder than that to voice.

“What you want?” Aziraphale responds a bit too quickly. “It’s okay not to know what you want.”

“No, I know what I want,” Crowley says. “I know exactly what I want right now.” He thinks abruptly of the last time he was in the bookshop, idly flipping through the slim volume of poetry left in the spot where Aziraphale always keeps whatever he’s currently reading. The thin line of ink beneath the text _There’s only one thing I want, don’t make me say it, just get me bandages_ , the only time he’s ever seen Aziraphale write in a book.

“What’s that?” Aziraphale sounds like he thinks he knows exactly what Crowley wants right now, too.

Crowley makes a face even though Aziraphale can’t see it. “It’s bad.”

“It’s okay.” He’s trying to sound reassuring, Crowley is sure, but that’s rather ruined by the glaringly obvious anticipation in it. He knows what Aziraphale is expecting: I want to be fucked by an angel. Or maybe even, I want to be made love to by an angel, worse because of what he is and because of the raw truth not even bothering to hide within it.

Crowley winces and closes his eyes, bracing himself a bit against the confessional wall. 

“I want a day off.”

Aziraphale huffs a startled laugh. “Okay, well I’m sure there are ways to—”

“No, I mean, I want every day off.” There’s only silence from the other side of the grate. “I want to talk to people without knowing what it is they want most and being expected to exploit it. I want to _live_ , angel, with no Great Plan, no ultimate finish line that everyone’s breaking their necks to get to just in hopes of a hollow victory or because we can’t breathe easy until then.” Aziraphale blessedly doesn’t point out that most of them don’t bother with breathing, anyway. “I want to live knowing there’s no bloody kingdom to come, just darkness, and not in some grand moral sense, but that everything just… stops. To know that, and keep living anyway. Because the way it is, I _don’t_ know how to keep living with myself for all of a guaranteed eternity if this is my life.”

He’s crying. He’s sure Aziraphale can hear that in his voice. He doesn’t stop long enough for a response.

“But I know that’s why people want people like you in their lives, because you just tell them how to do it. You just tell them what to do, how to cope with the infinite, even though I know where I’m going because I’m already there, and nothing I do is going to make any difference in the end, anyway, I’m still scared, why am I still scared?”

He looks down. Runs a hand over his face. Lets out a ragged breath. “So just tell me what to do.” Presses his lips together. Shakes his head. “Just fucking tell me what to do, angel.”

There’s a long moment where he fears and then accepts that there will be no response, and then, soft but firm, “Kneel.”

Crowley looks at the grate. “What?”

“Kneel.” 

Then a pause in which Crowley decides he should probably sober up. He’s not drunk, and it almost certainly won’t make him any less off-balance, but he does it anyway, and it makes him feel a bit better just on principle. He can’t recall which side invented the placebo effect. 

“Just kneel,” Aziraphale repeats, and it’s gentle, but it’s still disappointing.

Crowley sets his glass down on the wooden ledge and takes a deep breath. He knows the line, of course, but he’s always figured that if love is a sacrament, then it makes sense why he can’t have it. Why it hurts him so much.

He lowers himself to his knees.

And waits. He’s just about to try to hoist himself back up, feeling ridiculous, when the curtain to his side of the confessional is thrown back, and there’s Aziraphale, with an expression that Crowley has never seen before, full of such power and intensity that it’s impossible to forget that Aziraphale had a different form, once, had to beg every mortal being to not be afraid. Crowley unexpectedly feels a camaraderie with Moses; it feels necessary that he hide his face from any passerby tonight, lest they see the secondhand light in him and drop dead from exposure.

Crowley, on his knees, tilts his face up, his lips parted. Above him, the corner of Aziraphale’s mouth quirks briefly.

Aziraphale steps towards him.

He expects holy fire despite the distinct impiety of the situation, righteousness on the verge of setting the floorboards aflame, awe in its most ancient and violent sense. He expects Aziraphale to fuck him like a demon. He doesn’t expect Aziraphale to kiss him like a friend. 

Even as it happens, he’s not entirely sure it’s real—Aziraphale joining him on his knees, slowly and deliberately; Aziraphale bringing his hands to the sides of Crowley’s face with something too close to reverence to be described as anything else; Aziraphale’s thumb pressed to Crowley’s chin. Crowley wants suddenly, desperately, to pull it into his mouth, trace Aziraphale’s fingerprint with the thin tip of his tongue, but he stays still, suspended in time, wanting more to see what Aziraphale will do next and unwilling to risk breaking the spell. It’s easy to imagine Aziraphale coming to his senses, startling away from this. It’s harder to accept the force in his gaze, the firm determination.

Aziraphale turns his head, brings his mouth within an inch of Crowley’s and pauses, waiting for permission, drawing the moment out. 

Crowley turns his face, and Aziraphale kisses him, pulls back, kisses him again. It feels like everything is in slow motion—and then, abruptly, high speed, both of them rising to their feet, stumbling into the sanctuary, still kissing, breathing hard. Crowley fumbles at the edge of Aziraphale’s cassock, wants to press his palm into the bare skin of his back.

“This is a skirt _and_ trousers?” he asks, frustrated, and Aziraphale keeps kissing him.

“Sorry, sorry,” Aziraphale manages, grasping at it, stops with his mouth open against Crowley’s and Crowley’s back pressed to the outside wall of the confessional, leans back and presses their foreheads together. “What do you—” he asks, rushed, “Do you—” and Crowley nods, making both of their heads move.

“I do, yeah. Kind of a lot.”

“Kind of?” Aziraphale asks, and kisses Crowley’s neck, and Crowley’s hand fists tightly around the material at the back of his cassock.

“Kind of _a lot_ , I said,” and he doesn’t need to see Aziraphale’s face to sense the smirk. He swallows. “You?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale says, and raises his head to look at him. 

“You do know we’re in a church, right?” Crowley asks, raising an eyebrow, and Aziraphale rolls his eyes.

“Yes, I did notice that.”

“You—oh fuck, right, you’re drunk,” he says. He can’t fathom any other explanation. He’s not quite sure how he let himself forget; the kissing and the fact that Aziraphale still has him pinned to the wall probably have something to do with it.

Aziraphale shakes his head. “I, ah. Sobered up just before leaving my side of the confessional.” He looks a bit sheepish.

“Me too, at about the same time,” Crowley says, and Aziraphale blinks. 

“So—” Aziraphale starts, and then visibly thinks _fuck it_ and kisses him, brings one hand to the side of Crowley’s face and cradles the back of his head with the other, and fuck, Crowley wants to cry, feels like he’s still crying.

He kisses the vulnerable base of Aziraphale’s throat, long and insistent and gentle and begging it to be enough to leave a sense memory there, enough to make Aziraphale’s knees threaten to buckle every time he fastens the clerical collar. Maybe that’s wrong of him. Maybe he should be hoping Aziraphale will be forgiven this, washed clean of the sin of Crowley’s skin. He’s confronted with a question he never thought he’d have the opportunity to wrestle with: would he rather be a selfish lover than unable to love at all?

Doesn’t matter, not really, not now; Aziraphale’s hand is on his jaw, lifting it gently to kiss his mouth. _Give me my sin again_ , Crowley thinks.

“Your turn to tell me what you want,” Crowley says a moment later, his hands tangled in Aziraphale’s hair. Aziraphale swallows.

“I—well, I would be lying if I claimed to be unaffected by the sight of you on your knees.”

Crowley smiles, equally teasing and genuine. “Help me get this thing off, yeah?”

Aziraphale undoes a button, glancing at Crowley and then away and then back, like he can’t help it. _Even when I look away, I am still looking_ , marked by a blank, light pink sticky note. Crowley rests his hands on top of Aziraphale’s for a moment and then shifts them so Aziraphale is against the wall, drops to his knees, and starts unbuttoning it from the bottom. He’s having flashbacks to standing in his tailor’s shop in the Victorian era, staring at infinite rows of buttons and hooks and imagining—

Well. Something a lot like this. 

Their hands meet at Aziraphale’s waist, and Aziraphale shrugs out of the garment, lets it drop to the floor. Crowley rests his hands on the buckle of Aziraphale’s belt and looks up at him. 

“Okay?” he asks, and Aziraphale nods faintly, flushed, and Crowley could probably undo the buckle without looking at it but he looks down anyway, because he’s not sure he has the space in his chest to fit Aziraphale’s relieved and desperate expression.

He gets Aziraphale’s pants and underwear off, more clothes discarded on the church floor—the _church_ , fuck, he checks rather belatedly via a minor miracle that all the doors are locked—and finally, finally gets his mouth on Aziraphale’s clit, and he would think that time stopped if it weren’t for the occasional shifting of the moonlight through the stained glass, of Aziraphale’s hands in his hair, of the pitch and timbre of Aziraphale’s gasps.

He has just long enough to wonder if exposure to Divine Ecstasy will kill him before learning that it doesn’t.

Aziraphale presses lightly at the base of Crowley’s skull and Crowley takes the cue, stumbles to his feet, kisses him soft and languidly. 

“Do you want—the same?” Aziraphale asks eventually, and Crowley closes his eyes, tips his head back. Aziraphale bites lightly at his jaw.

“Fuck, angel. Yeah, I mean, if you—if you want, if it’s alright—”

“More than alright, my dear,” Aziraphale says, and exhibits a remarkable ability to multi-task by steering Crowley to the nearest pew while making quick work of Crowley’s belt and miracling his own clothes back on at the same time. Not just his pants; the cassock, too, and Crowley bites the inside of his cheek, unsure how to process what that says about him and how he’s supposed to cope with Aziraphale knowing it.

Rather well, apparently, because Aziraphale gets off those of Crowley’s clothes that were in the way and kneels in the space between the pews, between Crowley’s legs, and Crowley feels light-headed, he feels rhapsodic, he feels _good_.

Aziraphale looks at him, his hands on Crowley’s thighs. He looks—at peace. There’s a moment’s silence as Aziraphale puts his mouth on him, all the church holding its breath as Aziraphale bows his head to kiss his mons. Crowley flushes, embarrassed and thrilled, barely able to process the act before Aziraphale runs a finger along the length of him, then follows it with his tongue, and Crowley tips his head all the way back until it thunks against the top of the pew, grips his fingers around the edge of the bench like a sinner clutching a rosary, like a heathen clung to the homily, like a desperate man. 

Aziraphale is practically frantic, running his hands along Crowley’s legs and hips, tonguing Crowley’s clit, over and over and not getting less frenetic about it, frenzied and gasping and _devoted_ , sliding a finger inside him, and Crowley gasps, and then Aziraphale, all of a sudden, slows down. Kisses the inside of both of Crowley’s thighs. The hollows of his hips. The soft skin of his stomach, just below his navel. It’s better, impossibly, and it’s so much worse to bear.

 _Come slowly—Eden!_ Crowley thinks, half-wild, and Aziraphale brings his tongue to Crowley’s clit again, and he comes.

Crowley is still trying to catch his breath when the painting of Jesus over the altar clatters to the floor.

His eyes fly open, and he looks at Aziraphale, who is still kneeling, head tipped back against the hymnal on the back of the pew, and winces at his expression. Aziraphale looks terrified, the full scale of regret of making a mistake he’s managed to resist for six thousand years crashing down upon his shoulders—

Then he blinks.

And then, unexpectedly, Aziraphale laughs.

**Author's Note:**

> i’m on tumblr @campgender if you want to yell about good omens and fleabag
> 
> references/insp:
> 
> 1\. Renaissance by mirawonderfulstar made me want to write a church sex scene, and then I watched Fleabag and knew I had to write this  
> 2\. indelicates on ao3 / fullmetalcommunist on tumblr made a post that said “fuck you calling me angel like it doesnt turn you on just to say it” which is what prompted using angel instead of Father throughout this fic  
> 3\. Aaliyah suggested using “Love Story” as the song Aziraphale is playing in the church  
> 4\. The book referenced is Crush by Richard Siken; “There’s only one thing I want, don’t make me say it, just get me bandages” is from the poem “Wishbone”  
> 5\. When I was trying to think of what Crowley’s equivalent of “I want someone to tell me what to wear in the morning” would be, I thought of the line in summer and his pleasures by witching where Aziraphale says he didn’t think demons got a day off. That really stuck with me when I read it and it gives me a lot of feelings.  
> 6\. The end of Crowley’s confessional speech was shaped by “No Plan” by Hozier, specifically “there’s no plan / there’s no race to be run,” “there’s no plan / there’s no kingdom to come,” and “there will be darkness again”  
> 7\. “Love is a sacrament best taken kneeling” is a famous Oscar Wilde quote  
> 8\. “Give me my sin again” is from when Romeo and Juliet kiss after meeting at the masquerade  
> 9\. “Even when / I look away, I am still looking” is another Siken reference, this time from “Portrait of Fryderyk in Shifting Light” from War of the Foxes.  
> 10\. A couple of references to “Moment’s Silence (Common Tongue)” by Hozier, specifically “a moment’s silence when my baby puts the mouth on me” and “like a heathen clung to the homily.”  
> 11\. “Come Slowly—Eden!” is an Emily Dickinson poem


End file.
